Chopper Shield to Combat RPG’s

If we put some light on choppers worst disasters from the day the war began in Iraq, the reports reveals that somewhere around 28 people’s died in different attacks due to helicopter’s crash via RPG(Rocket propelled grenade) artillery. Now, to surmount the RPG guns New Jersey-based inventor Richard Glasson, has developed the first-ever anti-RPG system for aircraft which is a volley of nets that catch the grenades before they hit.
To develop this high-tech innovation Glasson a chief engineer at Control Products, a company that designs sensors for aerospace and defense and who has also worked on sensors that protect gearboxes from overheating on the president’s Marine One choppers and in jet engines on most commercial airliners, was inspired by the Mark Bowden’s best seller Black Hawk Down which gives an account of the 1993 killing of 18 U.S. soldiers in Somalia when an RPG brought down their chopper. Glasson said:
I couldn’t believe that such a low-tech weapon could take down a several-million-dollar aircraft,” that’s a spectacular outcome for a 40-year-old technology.
It is noteworthy that other countermeasures, such as radar jammers and flares are also proved worthless against hand weapons like RPGs. Defense companies are also working on some new systems that would fire projectiles at the grenades to demolish them and according to the Glasson this new system will be just ‘like hitting a bullet with a bullet’.
Therefore, instead of supporting the above mentioned concept to combat RPG’s he advised defense, as RPGs targets are amazingly straightforward and far much slower than the heat-seeking missiles he developed a new system that would block or at least avert the grenades before they hit the chopper.
Normally, RPG takes four to six seconds to explode when fired (unless it hits solid object- then it detonates on impact) it doesn’t explode after being fired (unless it hits a solid object—then it detonates on impact) but Glasson’s this new system enables chopper radar to calculate the speed and trajectory of an incoming grenade within milliseconds .
Half a second later, pods of launch tubes bundled on the helicopter aim and fire between one and eight unguided yard-long rockets on an intercept course with the grenade. The aim of rocket doesn’t have to be precise because each drags a braided steel-cable parachute woven with Kevlar and in the next second, these fast-opening chutes blow-up to form a series of six-foot-wide bombproof nets to catch the grenade and to drag it to the ground.
However, Glasson is still not sure about all the functioning of its new system until his will test the system on a real helicopter for which he will need the support of Pentagon or some of the contractors. Pentagon on the other hand does not seem to be much interested in the system, they told the developer that they are much interested in a laser based protection system, which is years from development. Glasson still is not losing hope, he is of the belief that the recent crashes will convince Pentagon to give at least one try to the system developed by him.
All the best Glasson.
Via: Popsci